Do you remember graduation? Assuming you've graduated from high school -- there are just enough people reading this that I know I don't know all of you personally -- do you remember what it felt like on that day? When twelve years of your eighteen year life culminate and end? When the first major milestone of your life is passed?

Oh, you had milestones before then... the first day of Kindergarten. The first day of First Grade, when the teacher told you that playtime was over, and it was time to work and learn. (My First Grade teacher didn't have much magic in her life). The first day of Junior High. The first day as a High School Freshman. The Prom. The first time you talked an attractive member of the opposite sex into breaking some of the school's acceptable use policy....

But graduation... that was different. The entire of your life encapsulated to that day. Your memory of it is far clearer than... well, most of High School, really.

There is a buzz -- an anticipation in the air today. A feeling combining nerves and profound relief. We've reached that milestone... that day... for the Class of 1999.

They're good kids. Extremely good kids. Good enough that I don't mind putting on a hot, black gown, sitting outside and trying to give out an award with a sore throat (which is better, but I'm coughing a lot more today). There are jokes about how there's been sunny weather for eighteen straight years at graduation, which apparently is true. People ascribe it to the Headmaster. There are kids practicing Graduation songs. Everyone's wearing their sunday best, despite the fact that the gowns cover them up head to toe.

I remember graduation. I sang the National Anthem -- I was All State Chorus, so I could do it by right. I even hit that Rocket's Red Glare note, believe it or not. We had a boring commencement speaker. We didn't throw our caps. Our School Theme choice was Where Everybody Knows Your Name, but the music teacher thought the lyrics were inappropriate so she substituted Seasons in the Sun on us -- a graduation theme far more suited to her high school graduation.

But you needed one more day of authoritarian rules before you could move onto the main course, right?

We graduated well. Our "Alcohol and Drug Free" party was thrown at Loring Air Force Base, and lasted all night on the School's nickel. They had a bowling alley, a 'disco' (I swear), a pool, a hot tub....

It was fun. We pulled in at eight in the morning, feeling like we'd seen the naked face of God on the bus ride back from Limestone, where the base was. It was a feeling of unity -- we had all gone through twelve years together.

Most of those kids I've never seen since. I wonder how many are dead. Some of them I know have kids who are in Junior High now.

One stands out in my memory. Kevin Gagnon. He stands out because he and I bowled together that night, and he was also the first kid I got to know in Kindergarten. He sat next to me, and he had what looked like a little plastic briefcase of "school supplies." Kevin was a good guy. We didn't hang out for the most part, but we liked each other just fine. I haven't seen or thought about Kevin since that graduation party. After I post this entry, I'll probably forget about him again. But he was a large part of a long part of my life. No longer more than half my life, but a large part nonetheless. It's worth giving him a thought on Graduation Day.

The students here don't have quite that advantage. The longest most of them can have known each other are four years, but even that's rare. Four-year Brewster Students are called Lifers, and they're almost an exclusive club come graduation. I think we have ten or fifteen of them. But it's still the day when they pass that milestone. That moment of pride. They become adults.

Or so they think. Sadly, they have about three more of these rites of passage before anyone considers them adults. Twenty-one, college graduation, and the day they get a sensible haircut, for example. But no matter what happens, this is a rite of passage that they'll never forget, and I'm happy for them.

---

The week has been so busy this journal has suffered significantly. I have a lot to talk about -- my Dad at The Phantom Menace, the Apple Tech Update in detail, the day to day minutia that have led up to graduation, Senior Powerbook turn-in....

Well, I'll try to pick it up where I can. For now, I'm going to detail what I most closely remember. Last night.

I managed to avoid Mexican Food -- in fact, I don't remember actually eating anything. I headed out, on a quest... a quest for a haircut. (Cue Doors music.)

It took me to South Portland, which is a long ways away, but there are lots of evening salons and barbershops to choose from there. So I started looking for a promising one. And looking. And looking.

Everyone was booked solid. Well, that made sense. So I went to the last, best hope. I went to... the Mall.

Yup. There were openings there, at Regis. My hairstylist was a blond bob-cut girl, quite attractive, with ice blue eyes, a tight sweater and lips that looked completely painted on. Her name was Terri, she was from Michigan, she had lived under the shadow of one of the O's in the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles for a while, but she wasn't an actress and didn't want to be one, but L.A. was so artificial and she wanted trees and places to hike so she moved to Maine which she loves and the winters weren't all that bad and besides, wintertime lets you do other things like ski and she and the girls she hangs out with liked to hot tub in the cold anyhow and this gave her a chance to be a hairstylist which she likes, because waitressing wasn't much fun, and it was hard to find work because of all the actors, you know?

My part of this conversation, for the record, was "Eric," "Fort Kent, originally," "up in New Hampshire," and "really?"

And then... she was done. I looked at my hair.

My hair and I fight a regular, pitched battle. It's amazingly straight, and moderately thick. As a result, it's hard to find a haircut I really like. It can usually grow out all right (the picture in the corner of the screen isn't all that bad, hairwise), but generally my hair, when freshly cut, looks like Riker's from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but not in a good way.

This... didn't look like that.

Do you remember that really horrible picture of Mike Myers from when he was a regular on Saturday Night Live? In the opening montage -- he's sitting at a bar and he turns to look at the camera, grinning? And his hair looks like someone just didn't like him?

That's more or less what my hair looks like. With a trendy razor undercut for the base of my neck and the sides. So, I look like Mike Myers if he were a tragically hip Lesbian. Except, of course, that Lesbians generally make this look good, and I sure don't.

It was also a haircut that no amount of recutting would fix. I would need to shave it off entirely to make it look good. But bald headed, I'd look like a Russian Bad Guy Professional Wrestler.

"I like it," Terri announced. "You look good like this."

"Oh... um... yeah," I said.

I paid her and headed out, and glanced in mirrors and storefronts as I walked. An overweight thirty-one year old who was trying to look twenty-two and 'hip to the kids' looked back.

I did the only rational thing. I bought new sunglasses. Putting those on, I look like Heavy #2 from a Jackie Chan flick.

I can cope with that.